The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: The Spiritual Classic & International Bestseller: Revised and Updated Edition

We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.

We are so addicted to looking outside ourselves that we have lost access to our inner being almost completely.

When people begin to meditate, they often say that their thoughts are running riot and have become wilder than ever before. But I reassure them that this is a good sign. Far from meaning that your thoughts have become wilder, it shows that you have become quieter, and you are finally aware of just how noisy your thoughts have always been.

learning to live is learning to let go.

“three wisdom tools”: the wisdom of listening and hearing; the wisdom of contemplation and reflection; and the wisdom of meditation.

So it is our motivation, good or bad, that determines the fruit of our actions.

In Tibetan the word for body is lü, which means “something you leave behind,” like baggage.

In Tibetan we call it Rigpa, a primordial, pure, pristine awareness that is at once intelligent, cognizant, radiant, and always awake. It could be said to be the knowledge of knowledge itself.3

Ego is then defined as incessant movements of grasping at a delusory notion of “I” and “mine,” self and other, and all the concepts, ideas, desires, and activity that will sustain that false construction.

As everything is impermanent, fluid, and interdependent, how we act and think inevitably changes the future.